Monday, August 29, 2011

Mundane Matters

How ridiculous is it that lockers are not assigned in the high school? Instead, students go down to the school, slap a lock on one of the working lockers, and then tell the office what their locker number is. It wouldn't actually be so ridiculous if, one, there were as many lockers as there are students; two, all of the lockers were in working order; and, three, they told freshman about this free-for-allbefore two days before school began.

Eldest, of course, is locker-less, as are many other students in the school. This fact lead me to leave a message on Friday with one of the assistant principals, a man I know from when he was at the middle school, asking about the situation. Not hearing back from him, I sent him an email to follow-up:

I left you a message earlier today regarding the lockers at the high school. I have a freshman there, and I called to ask about the locker situation. I originally spoke with the office manager, who told me that the procedure is for a student to find a free locker, put a lock on it, and then come to the business manager and let her know what the locker number is. I explained to her that not only had my son looked for a free locker, but so had I, and we could not find any free lockers that were intact. She indicated that there are, in fact, more lockers than students and that, yes, there are more than a few lockers which are damaged. She suggested I speak to an administrator.

I would like to know:

1. Do you happen to have a secret cove of working lockers somewhere that I could direct my son to?

2. What is the student enrollment at HIGH SCHOOL?

3. How many lockers -- not including the PE lockers, of course -- are there?

4. How many of those lockers are broken?

Yeah, it’s tough being my kid, right? The assistant principal didn’t reply to either my voicemail message or the email. Understandable, really, when you figure I didn’t start trying to contact him until Friday morning and it’s not yet Monday school time.

The school has about 1,500 students. I don’t know how many lockers there are, but I am figuring no more than about 1,200. And of those 1,200, more than 100 are broken. So what can you do?

Well, Pete can go down to the school Friday evening with Eldest. They can find a locker which stands a chance of working with some repairs. Pete can go to the hardware store Saturday morning and buy the hardware to fix it. He can then go to the school with his tools and hardware Saturday morning, repair a locker, slap Eldest’s lock on it, and call it a day.

And plan on breaking the damn thing the last day of school, taking home with him the items to repair it come the new school year, and go through the process yet again.

Meanwhile, we can watch the school district spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on building a whole new administrative offices wing at Eldest’s high school. As long as the administrators are cozy, that’s really all that matters, right?

5 comments:

You got that right about administrators' needs being taken care of first. That and some special schools. A good friend worked in a middle school around here with really bad ac and heat and water dripping from ceiling issues and now she is in the admin office and they don't even want her to hang her own picture on the wall. One peep and workers are there to fix anything.You could write the superintendent and ask him to give up some of his salary to help fix some items needed at schools like the one I read about in Fresno today.At high school my son goes to he gets an assigned locker (2,000 kids) and he pays $3.00 a year for it. At the middle school there are small lockers located within the homeroom classroom, so no scenes like in the kid flicks where social trauma occurs in the hallway by the lockers.

When it comes to the administration it's all ass backwards, no matter where your school district is. The fact that your freshman son has to deal with this and your husband also on Saturday????? It chaffes!

for real? this makes my blood boil...i have to say that our admin do not live in luxury, but some think they do...i have been in a fair number of districts and this office is small compared with very little folks manning the desks.

i am so sorry that you have to deal with this shit...it is NOT okay...holy moley!!!! i am frustrated just reading your post!!!! sure doesn't make for tax payers wanting to pay more taxes for our schools...ugh!